Arsenal Should Have Limited Damage In Bayern Thrashing – Hummels

Bayern Munich defender Mats Hummels has said he believes Arsenal should have tried to limit the damage in their 5-1 Champions League home defeat to the Bundesliga champions.

The result, which sealed a 10-2 aggregate loss, saw Bayern score all their goals after the break following the sending off of defender Laurent Koscielny.

Koscielny was dismissed in the incident that led to the penalty from which Bayern equalised, and Hummels said he felt Arsenal should have taken that as a cue to stop pouring forward.

“Of course, that’s an opportunity,” the Germany international said. “You just say: ‘OK, we take this 1-1 or we take maybe a 1-2.’

“The 1-5 doesn’t look good. But maybe they felt they could score again so it was OK for them to keep playing like this — but of course then we played things really well.

“The red card and the penalty changed the whole game [but] Arsenal wanted to keep being offensive. They lost the ball sometimes too easy, and so I think this result can happen in a game that was clearly not a 5-1 if you see the whole 90 minutes.”

His comments echoed those of Arsenal’s Theo Walcott, who told the official Arsenal website that he felt the team should have focused on preventing further goals.

“We wanted to just show passion and commitment — that hasn’t been there in recent weeks, to be honest — and we did,” he added.

“We should have been smart and just [opted for] damage limitation really. It’s just a big shame. People will be saying that we don’t care and stuff like this, but obviously we do care.